Good Book Hunting, April 30, 2011: The Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Book Sale

I wasn’t going to go to the book sale at Remington’s.

Wait, let me back up: I volunteered at the Friends of the Library book sale on Friday night, collecting the money as other people bought books and offering a running commentary to the customers about books they had. I was pretty adamant to the volunteer at the table with me that I was not going to go to the sale to buy anything because I already own enough books and I don’t have any room.

Of course, as with any of these things, I always find someone has bought something that I want specifically. In this case, a young man came through the line with Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, which I have not seen in the wild, but in retrospect that’s because I tend to skip over the religious section.

I told the guy about it, and he said these fateful words: “There’s another one, but it’s an older edition.”

So despite all of my assurances to my partner volunteer, since my beautiful wife and I had a ‘date night’ on half price day, I fell off the wagon. Loudly.

I got:

• Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, fortunately.
• A ten volume set called the Great Ideas program. It was $10. But it meant I needed a box to carry them, and away we went.
• Peace Kills by P.J. O’Rourke.
• A book called Chariot which is a history of that particular military equipment.
• Two courses on CD from The Teaching Company that were quarter of the list price since they were half price of half price. I thought that I’d picked up a third, and either I did and it was left at the counting table, or I put it back demonstrating some restraint.
• David Barry’s History of the Millennium.
• Eric Flint’s 1632. I already own the sequel 1633, so I can read them in order now.
• An English translation of Pepita Jimenez, a book I have already read in Spanish.
• A collection of writings from Spinoza.
• Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan in paperback. I was supposed to read this in college. Of that particular class, the only book I read of the required reading was Plato’s Republic. I read a lot in college, but only a small percentage of what I was supposed to have read.
• The Letters of Ayn Rand. We chose to go to the sale instead of going to see Atlas Shrugged Part I. I bought this in recompense.
• A couple of localish history of small town kinds of books.
• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois.
• The Fantasy Role-Playing Gamer’s Bible, which is earnest, and The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, which is not.

And so on.

My wife bought a couple books, mostly cookbooks that she picked up while waiting me to finish, along with a record, some sheet music, and a CD. The Smooth Jazz CD is mine, but please note it’s not smooth jazz in format; it’s a collection of standards by Sinatra, Count Basie, and whatnot.

The total, after half-off, was $98.50. I got 42 books in total along with the CDs. I have already read the Dilbert book depicted within, which means I need to read 41 by October’s sale to keep pace.

The funny thing is how I almost blackout regarding what I buy. When my wife and I had dinner, I could barely recount what I bought. Some books I thought I’d picked up, I must have put back. I am such a glutton.